The Swastika Set-Up - tale #4 in The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius.
With
'Swastika' in the title, it is as if this entire thirty-page tale is
coated with the Nazi symbol. Oh, yes, the black Nazi swastika in the
center of white and red on flag after flag, plaque after plaque,
repeated thousands and thousands of times, the swastika representing
force, power, the desire to crush everything and everyone who dares
stand in the way of the unbending absolute as proclaimed by the Nazis.
However,
for Jerry Cornelius, the swastika becomes merely a set-up, a framework,
a preamble for our Eternal Champion to swing and swagger into fabulous form.
So, turn on some Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, get yourself
ready to become a co-creator as you read about a set-up most swastikish.
Oh, yes, you as reader are empowered to engage your creative imaginings
as you make your way through this tale, filling in the gaps, adding
your own flashes and zips of sparkle.
The Swastika Set-Up spotlights dozens of mini-chapters with such headings as The Fix, Double Lightning, Uncomfortable Visions, Electric Landlady, Popcorn, A Cure for Cancer (haha! if you've already read The Cornelius Quartet, you are ahead of the game), Anarchists in Love.
So many opportunities for a reader to flash their magic inner eye
flasher. Come up with your own! Meanwhile, take a gander at a gaggle of
mine, as per -
ULTIMATE FORBIDDEN FRUIT
The opening
micro-chapter finds Jerry flashing back to a time when he was having sex
(take a deep breath) with his dear old mom. The concluding line, "He
adjusted the stiff white shirt cuffs projecting an inch beyond the
sleeves of his black car coat, placed his hand near his heart and
shifted the shoulder holster slightly to make it lie more comfortably.
Even the assassination business was getting complicated."
Ah, the
conjoining of sex and violence, a combination explosive in the extreme, a twist
away, frequently a perverse, kinky twist, from Eros and Thanatos - love
and death intertwined, dancing their eternal dance. And talking of
twisted, recollect the twisted minds needed to come up with the twisted
Nazi cross on their red, black and white.
Jerry's pythonic
playing will, via a substantial snatch, seize the twisted Nazi energy
and twist it again, transforming SS in ways most spectacular.
MANY METAPHORS
In a micro-chapter entitled The Map,
Jerry muses, "The recent discovery of sex and drugs had taken their
minds off the essential problems. Time was silting up (great image
Michael Moorcock!). Jer grins as he drives along in his dozy of a
Duesenberg but then it happens: "His car hit an old man with an
extraordinary resemblance to Walt Disney's Pinocchio. No, there was an
even closer likeness. He got it. Richard Nixon. He roared with
laughter."
Recall the whole Fascist connection applied to the
tale of Pinocchio, where Geppetto represents Swiss neutrality, Stromboli
as bearded Mussolini, Barker the Coachman as a fifth columnist,
Monstro the Whale as a German U-boat menace and peace-loving Pinocchio
as guy with a phallus for a schnozzola. Also recall tricky dickhead
Dicky as a president some accused as being a Fascist.
No wonder Jer roared with laughter!
MALICIOUS MISS
I'd be derelict if I didn't include a snatch of dialogue. Here's JC with MB as in Miss Brunner:
"Eventually
Miss Brunner emerged from the wheelhouse...She held a baby in her
crooked right arm, a Smith & Wesson .44 revolver in her left hand.
She gave him a bent smile. "Good morning, Mr. Corenlius. So our paths come together again."
"I got your note. What's up, Miss Brunner?"
She shook her short red hair in the wind and turned her feline face down to regard the baby.
"Do you like children, Mr. Cornelius?"
"It depends." Jerry moved to look at the baby and was shocked.
"It's got your eyes and mouth, hasn't it?" said Miss Brunner. She offered it to him. "Would you like to hold it?"
He
took a wary step backward. She shrugged and tossed the little creature
far out over the rail. He heard it his the water, whine, gurgle.
"I
only hung on to it in case you'd want to have it." she said
apologetically. "Okay, Mr. Cornelius. Let's get down to business."
"I might have kept it," Jerry said feelingly. "You didn't give me much of a chance to consider."
"Oh, really, Mr. Cornelius. You should be able to make up your mind more quickly than that. Are you going soft?"
"Just crumbling a little, at the moment.""
Yes, indeed, familiar C Quartet faces pop up as part of the S Set-Up.
TO TRUTH OR NOT TO TRUTH
In a brief micro entitled Falsehood,
we read three words; "Truth is absolute." There's some serious irony
going down here in the 20th century: the zenith of Nazi power, Nazi
ironclad intolerance, Nazi absolute certainty in their own jackboot principles
shared the same time frame as the development of Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle with its recognition of tolerance and humility as
foundational in our human, all too human exploration of and living in the
universe.
What to do here in the ferocious 21st? Hang easy;
dangle loose. Kick back with JC the EC, listen to some of those golden
60s oldies and groove to the rhythms of your own bod. And, when you have a
moment, read The Swastika Set-Up to make your own commendable connections, as many as you like. 
British author Michael Moorcock, born 1939
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